Social Media Minute: Blog Network Hacked, Twitter's Growth Stalls

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

Major Blog Network Hacked

Customer Service Goes To Facebook Via UserVoice

LinkedIn's Top Over-used Descriptive Terms

Twitter's Growth in US Stalls

Major Blog Network Hacked

Gawker, the company behind many popular blogs such as Gizmodo and Lifehacker, experienced a hack over the weekend that is affecting a large number of Internet users. Gawker's comment system was hacked, making it possible for the hackers to see usernames and passwords for anyone who has ever left a comment on any blog within Gawker's network.

Should you be concerned? If you've ever commented on a story published on Gawker related blog, then yes. Many users also use the same password throughout multiple sites. If you fall into this category, you should change your password on all of the sites that you hold dear.

This hack, while unfortunate, is a good reminder for all online users to use strong passwords that are unique in some way for each website you sign into. With personal branding being such a facet in today's online life, user accounts have an elevated importance.

Customer Service Goes To Facebook Via UserVoice

Good customer service is hard to find these days, especially with seemingly faceless online companies. GetSatisfaction, an online support/help community, helps companies field and respond to service requests, making it very popular in recent years. However, users must be met where they are online and UserVoice is trying to do just that.

UserVoice has just launched a Facebook application that allows businesses to give customer support directly on a Facebook page. With more businesses using Facebook to interact with customers, the ability to field service requests is a huge advantage. With UserVoice, companies can interact with customers in real-time.

UserVoice is free until the end of this year and then after that the service runs around $90/month. Do you interact with companies online? Would being able to complain or praise a business directly in Facebook appeal to you? Sound off in our comments below!

LinkedIn's Top Over-used Descriptive Terms

LinkedIn can be a job seekers' best friend. If you've built your connections right and have the proper resume in the system, LinkedIn provides a wealth of knowledge for job recruiters and job hunters. However, what terms are so over-used on the LinkedIn network that they become almost laughable when used?

According to LinkedIn's blog, some examples include: "Innovative", "Motivated", "Result-oriented" and "Team Player", amongst others. These terms, most used in the United States, are strewn about amongst LinkedIn's 85 million resumes. Looking at US terms versus EU, it seems there are a lot of folks with "extensive experience" in the US and many "innovative" folks in western European countries.

No matter how you look at it, it's apparent that LinkedIn job hunters need to get a bit more original with the terms they use on their resume. Or perhaps the tactic of using these terms is working. Either way -- this is a fun list to peruse.

Twitter's Growth in US Stalls

There's no denying that Twitter is amongst the darlings of online social networking. The company has seen some amazing growth in the last 18 months. Just this year, the company announced they've served 25 million tweets. However, it appears that Twitter's US growth trajectory has flatlined. In the United States in November, Twitter garnered about 24 million users, down from 25.1 million users in the prior month of October.

Globally, Twitter draws roughly 104.6 million visitors in October, which is up about 80% from the year before. Also, the user base for Twitter is up worldwide -- about 46 million users for all of 2010, with 6 million of those new users coming from the United States.

It's possible that Twitter's growth stall is caused by more users utilizing Twitter clients such as Seesmic and Tweetdeck, rather than actually going through Twitter.com to interact and Tweet. However, the lack of growth in the US is severely offset by the huge global numbers and the picture still looks good for Twitter.

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